Human Nature
- Thomas Allen
- May 31, 2021
- 4 min read
We have a habit of setting ourselves apart from the natural world, as though we are superimposed onto it and our manmade environments and technologies are unnatural. But how realistic is that division and where do we draw the line?
I was initially tempted to trace the divorce in our psyche between Human and Nature back to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden of Eden. Perhaps Christian mythology is responsible for popularising the belief that humanity is a departure from the natural order of things, and in that sense it is a Western phenomenon. But then I remembered the poet Clayton Eshleman’s interpretation of the prehistoric cave paintings of southwest France as expressions of nostalgia for what us humans had departed from – we were no longer so animal as the aurochs, horses and deer depicted on the walls and we wanted to rekindle that connection. So maybe this feeling of alienation began to emerge with the dawning of our species.
The early magic, ritual and religious practices of which those cave paintings are thought to be a part could represent humankind’s initial efforts to transcend our natural limits and attain supernatural status. This preoccupation of ours has persisted ever since, but our efforts are now augmented by scientific method and unchecked by a fear of the divine. The success this androcentric approach has had in bending the environment to the human will has created a heightened sense of control that makes us feel as though we have successfully escaped natural laws. And I cannot help but wonder if that perceived alienation from Nature is felt all the more keenly by a Capitalist society whose value system frames the world as a set of resources to be exploited, with ruthless efficiency.
(My blog post on ‘The Mangle of Art Practice’ offers a perspective in which us humans do not have the degree of control we like to imagine but are instead decentred in a dance of agency with other ‘actors’.)
It is clear to see, though, that we are bound up in Nature, made of the same stuff as trees and valleys and rain. The patterns of roots, estuaries and pinecones repeat themselves in our own flesh – in our blood vessels, digestive tracts and hair follicles.
These veins of a human body pasted onto pine planks are reminiscent of plant roots. Displayed at the Hunterian Museum, London
Also, taking us collectively as human colonies, I doubt I would be the first to liken our bustling cities to termite mounds or our offices and flats to honeycomb cells. There might be a few more straight edges – us humans have a penchant for the ruler and level – but then we are reminded of the splintered aesthetic of crystalline structures in salts and ices.
Our imaginative capacity for things such as art, religion and technology is pointed to as a defining characteristic of humans, and that may well be true. But it does not set us apart from the natural world any more than plants’ ability to photosynthesise sets them apart; it only defines us within Nature.
As a bit of an aside, it is interesting to note that other traits that were once considered to be uniquely human, such as tool use and cultural modes, have now been observed in other species. For instance, primates are known to use stones to crack open nuts1, and Corvids have been seen fashioning sticks for fishing out grubs from wood in styles that are particular to their kinship groups2.
Thomas Allen, ‘Man Made’, 50x55cm, charcoal and sanguine on paper
It seems obvious to point out that we are composed of and dependent upon the sun, soil and seas, but what is perhaps less obvious is just how heavily influenced by human activity – indeed, how manmade – the ‘natural world’ is. So deep into its fabric do the ripples caused by humanity go that you would be hard-pushed to find a purely wild, virgin landscape anywhere on Earth.
To take a personal example, walking through the English countryside where I live, the ancient woodlands that I once took to be untouched by human hand are in fact not so. They have been shaped over centuries by our need for materials and space for farming, by kings’ desire to hunt and government development plans, and by the extinction of some species and introduction of others (animal, plant and fungi).
England is a particularly well-trodden part of the world and it has been for a long time, though. So what about remote places like the depths of the Amazon rainforest or Antarctica, you might ask. Well, the impacts of climate change and food demand are widely publicised, with stories of melting icecaps and extensive deforestation making headlines and being taught in schools. Those impacts are quite clear to see, but there are more subtle ones too.
For instance, through the mechanism of trophic cascading, human pursuits such as the hunting to extinction of keystone species can have profound knock-on effects that alter the very morphology of a landscape in areas that might otherwise have minimal human presence.
Then there are also those influences that are hidden by time, such as in the Amazon rainforest where thick vegetation obscures the imprint left by ancient civilisations3.
So, not only are we more natural than we perhaps acknowledge, but nature is more human than we often realise.
(Hero image: Thomas Allen, ‘Man Made’, 50x55cm, charcoal and sanguine)
Footnotes
‘Tool Use in Animals: Cognition and Ecology’, Crickette Sanz, Josep Call and Christophe Boesch, 2013
Jelbert, S.A., Hosking, R.J., Taylor, A.H. et al. Mental template matching is a potential cultural transmission mechanism for New Caledonian crow tool manufacturing traditions. Sci Rep 8, 8956 (2018). (link)
de Souza, J.G., Schaan, D.P., Robinson, M. et al. ‘Pre-Columbian earth-builders settled along the entire southern rim of the Amazon’, Nat Commun 9, 1125 (2018) (link)
Further reading
Clayton Eshleman, ‘Juniper Fuse’, 2003
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